Public Those We Remember

[Aela Talith]

Sullust - The Temple Ruins

"It's been a while." Aela's voice echoed through the empty caverns around her, the sound reverberating over cracked walls and fallen pieces of a ceiling. The long forgotten halls slowly falling victim to the constant volcanic flows around them. The great glasteel dome above had long since fallen, reduced to rubble and ruin by the wears of time and turbolaser fire. Flows of molten rock and great dust storms covering the once grand Temple until only it's buried chambers remained. It was an echo now, less than a fragment of what it had been when the New Jedi Order had first built it.

"Five years, ten?" Her voice was softer now, no longer reverberating against the walls. "I'm not sure."

She stared ahead at the sigil on the wall, the old mosaic still clinging into place by some miracle. The outstretched wings calling like a hawk in light as they diverged from the oh so familiar lightsaber. She could still remember when it had been made. The tiles carefully laid by a man named Oril, if she remembered right. He'd been a Besalisk and a master of his craft. Every movement of his four arms had been so careful, so precise. He'd not measured a thing, not once, and yet had created the art which still stood before her now. The walls around it having long since crumbled away to show the iron supports behind them. "I see time a little differently. A year feels like a month, a decade drifts in the blink of an eye."

Aela excused, her eyes finally flickering down to the rows of lightsabers laying on the ground. There were dozens of them, some buried within the rubble, others still sitting in place upon their small little scraps of cloth. A few had deteriorated, their natural casings burned by the heat of Sullust or falling to whatever ravages of decay could be found. The remainder were covered in filth or rust, simple hints of mental still gleaming through. The torch in her hand casting enough light to see that much at least.

Once, they had laid here in columns and rows. Each carefully placed upon a remembrance of their former owner. "A gift, or a curse, my father says. From my grandmothers line."

She smiled ruefully at the lightsabers.

"A poor excuse, I know. I wish I had a better one." The lightsabers did not answer her, nor did the ghosts of those they once belonged to. "I should have come sooner, I'm sorry."

The apology felt as hollow now as when they had laid the blades to rest here. When they had first built the memorial to those lost in the conquests of the Core. She had said it then much to the same effect. Her words had not brought any of them back, and now they did little to soothe the sentiments of those lost in a now half-forgotten war. "Truth is, I was busy living life."

"I got away. Ignored every trouble in the galaxy. All the battles and wars that unfolded. The Sith that rose and fell. The Jedi that came and went." Orange eyes flickered away from the sabers on the floor, teeth sinking into the inside of her lips. Admitting the truth of it was hard. Harder here, when facing those who had been lost because of what she had preached. What she'd fought so hard for. "And it was...nice."

Aela choked on the word. "I had an apartment. A real job. I even dated normal people. Not soldiers, not Jedi or Sith or anyone who'd fought against them." A laugh escaped her throat despite everything. "I did train an apprentice or two. Some lost little lambs who came looking."

The smile on her face came back for a moment.

"It was nice." She repeated again, as if she were revelling in the memories passing through her head. "But it did cost me."

There was no question in that. She could feel the distance she had made. The cavern of emotions that now lay between her and those she had once called friends. Even her family, she could not pretend that her distance had tarnished things. The walls she had built around her ordinary little life had broken something, something within and around her. Aela felt it as keenly as one would feel a knife in their side.

Every time she had turned on the holonews. Everytime she'd read an article about the rising tide of the Sith, the conquest of a new world, the constant destruction reaped by Galactic Wars. She'd felt that wound deepen, another piece of her beliefs carved away. "We fought a war. We won a war."

She glanced back at the lightsabers.

"And it meant so little." Aela's gaze turned towards the ceiling. Feeling the anger flicker up in her chest, the resentment and rage. "They rule here now, after all our efforts, after all we lost."

It was bitterness that entered her voice now. A bile that sunk over her tongue and stayed even as she glanced back down to the rows of lightsabers on the floor. "The wheel turned, and we ended up right back here."

"Maybe that's why I left." Her head shook as she bit her tongue, regretting the words almost as soon as they were said. The resentment she felt did not belong here, not in this place. Her gaze flickered back to the mosaic. Eyes drawing slowly on the carefully tiled lines of the symbol that once emobdied so much. A long breath drew into her lungs, the sulfur stinging her nostrils as she closed her eyes. "I'm sorry."

She repeated once more, slowly turning away from the collection of resting lightsabers. "I should have come back sooner."

 

[Aurelian Sigismund]

Sullust || Jedi Temple Ruins
Aela Talith

He had not been behind the Blackwall since before it had been established. The Sith maintained it with vigorous brutality but in all their oppressive hate and anger, there were opportunities to slip by. The harder the grasp, the more turned against such needlessly cruel measures. Yet he had not come here to ponder the benefits and drawbacks of a regime he despised for its very existence.

Aurelian had found the mentions of the Sullust Jedi Temple somewhere down the list of places catalogued in the Nihilus Decree and decided to pay a visit and collect whatever he could. The structure certainly was impressive, even if slowly drifting into ruin and disrepair. The new overlords certainly did not care to maintain it - nor would he. Though he himself would have probably annihilated this place.

The gold armoured figure moved through the stony halls with steps that disturbed dust as much as the long silence that had fallen over the cold corridors. From his plate's extensions radiated light, clinical and cold, but bright as he slowly made his way deeper into the structure. His sword, Valoris, hung at his side, a hand resting on the pommel, not menacing nor feeling threatened. Each step offered a clank of metal on stone, the shift in the plates of his aegis.

Then he heard a voice. His helmet's systems actually picked it up less than heartbeat after his own senses did and offered a precise location and distance. Odd. He had not expected to find another soul here. Aurelian's stride continued, neither more silent nor slower, he felt no need to conceal his presence.

Now the Vandemarian could hear the words the voice spoke.

"And it meant so little."

"They rule here now, after all our efforts, after all we lost."

"The wheel turned, and we ended up right back here."

"Maybe that's why I left."

"I'm sorry."

"I should have come back sooner."

Ah. The irony. The woman's voice carried bitterness, maybe even sadness or disappointment - he could not tell. She probably had some emotional bond to this place, what it once was or what had happened, some sensation of emotional connection that he could only look past and neither endorse nor understand.

But Aurelian understood what she said and as he stepped into the hall where she was, his voice rose as cold as the stone around them. "You would have only helped feed the wheel's maw further." From behind his helmet he saw the collection of lightsabers in front of her. "The dead will not hear you, not here and not anywhere."

 

[Aela Talith]

Aela heard his armor before she heard his voice.

Down in the depths of these lost caverns footsteps may as well have been thunder. Her steps stalled as the figure turned the corner, her torch leaning forward to cast light over the hall in front of her. Orange eyes flickered over the ostentatious golden armor, drawing over the man's blade as a slight frown touched upon her lips.

She did not recognize him, but then that was no surprise. "No."

The Jedi agreed.

"They will not." No tension seemed to enter her, no expectation of confrontation. She did not know who this man was, if he was Sith, Jedi, or something else, but there had always been a chance of finding someone else here. The Temple was lost, but Sullust had not been. Aela knew she had been lucky to make it down here without stumbling upon someone on the surface. Perhaps she should have been more surprised to find someone down here, but the Force was ever strange in it's twists of fate. "But the words needed to be said nonetheless."

Her gaze flickered back over her shoulder for a moment, eyes drawing over the rows of lightsabers. She let a moment pass, and then slowly returned her attention to the stranger. "Have you come to desecrate this place?"

 

[Aurelian Sigismund]

Aela Talith

"Bold of you to assume there is something left to desecrate. Or ever has been."

His gaze moved up and down, measuring and calculating what she might be, do or be able to do. Not in fear, not in wariness, it was as natural as breathing to him. Threat assessment was not fueled by emotion or even the individual in front, he just did it subconsciously after all this time.

"By your words you were a guardian or inhabitant of this place, someone deeming this location extraordinary." Aurelian mused loudly as he fully stepped into the chamber where she was, seeming like he would barely fit through the doorway.

"One does not meet many Jedi or their lackeys by chance behind the Sith's Blackwall." An observation which made the risk she posed increase significantly.

"Did you just come here to speak empty words to deaf memories or is this some attempt to reconsecrate this site?"

 

[Aela Talith]

"Cynical and uncivil." Aela noted dryly, her torch flickering between the two of them as the giant of a man stepped into the room.

The earth twisted beneath the weight of his steps, lava-flows beneath the unkept caverns having long since begun to erode the bedrock beneath them. Sullust was ever changing. It's great magna flows like rivers which rushed through the planets crust, changing the earth in an almost constant pace. Within a few years time, this Temple would be gone. Reclaimed by the planet itself.

He had not answered her question, not really, but his words gave enough. "Do you walk into graveyards and spit on the stones as well?"

The stranger was right in a way, of course. This Temple was not Tython, nor Lothal, or Ossus. It did not have the centuries of histories that deemed it a sacred site of the Jedi or anyone at all. But, there was always something to be remembered. A thing or someone that marked a place. For Aela, that was her friends. Those she had lost along the way, whose memory was tied into this fading place.

They would not be forgotten when the Temple fell into the rivers of Sullust, this remembrance was part of that.

"I came here to remember." She mused, ever truthful. "And to be reminded."

 

[Aurelian Sigismund]

Aela Talith

"Uncivil? The absence of needless niceties is not uncivilized, it is pragmatic. Nor is the stating of a fact cynical. Your usual disposition to life must be very cheerful if such simple speech demands sarcasm."

Aurelian was measured, matter of fact in his tone, even more void of emotion than a droid might be. Probably because he had chosen to be whereas a droid had less choice. Ironically, he would think even less of the places on the planets she thought about.

The dark hue of his split visor had a faint blue hue, dark and icy. It moved to look at the lightsabers and their wrappings, inspecting them with clinical curiosity. He calmly stepped forward, not directly towards her but to circle to one of the weapons.

"Fallen brothers and sisters deserve remembrance. Why do you have to be reminded of it?"

Every step the plates clanked, the stone echoed with his weight. With every move there was also the noise coming from several trinkets or artifacts that hung from his belt, each different, each unique.

Aurelian's gaze moved back to her, curious as to what her response might be. She was partly fascinating and partly predictable. For the latter he had spent one too many moments in the presence of Light sided idealists who were so good it almost made him sick. For the former part, she was here for a cause he could understand.

 

[Aela Talith]

Aela smiled, despite herself. These discussions felt so very familiar, and there was something to being immersed into them once again. "Pragmatism and Cynicism are close cousins, I find."

She countered, unable to keep the amusement from her tongue. "It's not cheer, Sir, but courtesy. My mother taught me it's importance."

Her eyes flickered to his.

"Perhaps you have forgotten those lessons from yours?" The jest slipped from her tongue as she gave way, stepping to the side of the room so he could move towards the lightsabers. Her eyes carefully following his movements. "It is a shallow mind that dismisses the beliefs of others. Respect commands both learning, and knowledge."

The words were an echo of her mothers. Her father had taught her much when it came to the ways of the galaxy, but it was Kira Talith who brought her the virtues she'd always lived by. "I stepped away for a time."

She answered his question, watching his steps as he neared the sabers on the floor.

"From them, their memory. Everything it came with." Aela gestured towards the sabers on the ground. Considering them for a moment more before she drew herself up. "I thought it time to remember."

 

[Aurelian Sigismund]

Aela Talith


He remembered much. He did not remember the voice or even face of his mother. It was inconsequential in his current life, probably either a memory shed for it's insignificance or locked so deeply away that it was inaccessible to him anyway.

"Arrogance born of ignorance has many forms."

Aurelian looked towards her. "Did your abandoning of your companions provide you with such confidence? Or did it merely bolster what I have to presume the Jedi already planted?"

"I must wonder what courtesy you offered to them when you left and what you hope to remedy with your appearance in this late hour after their demise."

The Vandemarian did not kneel down or pay more attention to the lightsabers for now. Again there was the tension between the two sides of her that she was showing so far. He had no reason or interest to fight her but she clearly knew this place before it turned into a ruin.

"Where I come from we do not honour the dead out of guilt or on a whim. Nor do we spend time with words for them. Their actions, their sacrifices inspire, the past becomes a lesson, not an anchor."

 

[Aela Talith]

"We couldn't agree more." Aela said, amusement flickering over her features as he spoke of arrogance and ignorance. She did not blame him for the assumptions that passed his lips, in another time she would have made the same. Perhaps even echoed them.

"No Jedi taught me my convictions." She countered. "Nor my leaving them behind them."

No, her family gave her that. "When I departed, we had won our war. There was no debt left behind. No toll to be paid. Just memories to be kept."

Aela glanced down at the sabers, letting the anamnesis wash over her her mind. Names, faces, and a hundred conversation born in both joy and sorrow drew over her. She remembered them, each and every one. The sacrifice they had made, the victory it had brought. The opportunity that it allowed her to take.

After a moment she opened her eyes, letting her gaze flicker around this room.

"This is what we gave to them." She gestured to the lightsabers, the mosaic on the wall. When she had been here last it seemed a fitting tribute. A way to remember those had been lost. Perhaps there was more they could have done, but even returning now, the memories were still there. Was that not what mattered? "A graveyard for those with no remains, a way for at least some to remember."

Aela looked around the fading chamber. "Not enough, but then what would be?"

"It's not guilt that brought me back, or a hunt for some remedy." Perhaps telling a stranger was easier than going home, bearing her soul to her family who would be so painfully understanding. "I already told you, I cam here to remember, and be reminded."

 

[Phy]

Sullust
Tags: Aela Talith , Aurelian Sigismund

Droid Body​

Phy never got to know the New Jedi Order. Not truly, anyway. Her guardian, Jasper Kai'el , was born into the New Jedi Order. A place like this outdated him by quite a bit, though it was left in the state most other places were: Ruin. That seemed to be the common through-line after the purge, at least. The shard was not here to mourn, however. What she came for was knowledge. Jedi Records were not something they regularly had available back on Refuge, and she certainly couldn't venture onto Coruscant. The temple there had been converted some time ago now into the home of the Sith. She certainly wouldn't be welcome there, and she wasn't about to make her body look gloomy to try and sneak her way in.

So ruins it was, and to ruins she went. From what few records she could find, Sullust's Temple used to be in the sky. How sad it was, then, that it now lay on the ground. Phyla hated being on the ground. She wanted to be in the air whenever she could. It was where she felt the most free, after all. Of course, when she asked Jasper for info about the place he said he had never been. Go figure. Then again, he had always been busy between the Council and the Mandalorian Enclave attacking and then the Tingel Arm...

She felt the pressure of living up to that standard bite at her spirit for a moment while she sat atop one of the fallen shelves within the archives of the ruin. The record she was reading over was an old tome. It was about lightsaber forms, but it really wound up reading more like drama between masters dissing each-other's preferred style of combat. Amusing, but not really what she was looking for. This place had been picked clean. So the young shard rose again and began to aimlessly drift once more. That was about when...

"I already told you, I cam here to remember, and be reminded."

Distant words drew her attention. People? In a place like this? Were they ghosts? Phyla levitated her way through the ruined halls and peered around the corner into a room where several lightsabers were laid on the ground before a mosaic. Two individuals stood before it, a blonde woman and a man in the gaudiest armor that she had ever seen. Surely that couldn't be practical, and it broke so many rules of fashion.

The shard didn't shout out to make herself known, however. She kept herself hidden around the corner, trying to get a better idea at what it was that was being spoken about. She didn't know what to make of these people yet. If any were here to steal.

Or worse.

 

[Aurelian Sigismund]

Aela Talith | Phy

"I fail to understand the concept of your remembrance as it has no practical use. Nor how a war won could lead you to turn your back on duty."

It was genuine what he said and did not bear the tone of judgmental accusation that the words would suggest, it was a rough, blunt directness but he seemed not interested to agitate or offend her at this point.

Aurelian's gaze though wandered up and looked towards a corner. His armours sensors had picked up movement and another signature, not a lifeform, but a droid figure that tried to keep out of sight. And for a moment he considered to address the hidden one but he decided against it and kept his gaze wandering until it was on the female again.

"Which conflict took these lives? Which enemy was seemingly defeated?"